


Red Cold River

by SummerNightmares (BlackDog9314)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Nightmares, POV Dean Winchester, Sam misses Jess, Season One fic, The Wincest is One-Sided, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackDog9314/pseuds/SummerNightmares
Summary: I can't feel anything at all,this life has left me cold and damned.I can't feel anything at all,this love has led me to the end.Sam and their father have the same kind of nightmares, Dean quickly learns after they find Jess dead on the ceiling.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Red Cold River

Sam and their father have the same kind of nightmares, Dean quickly learns after they find Jess dead on the ceiling.

Neither Sam nor John wake easily from their bad dreams, both of them prone to thrashing and screaming under Dean’s hands for slow seconds that melt into even slower minutes as they surface from the mire. Both Dean’s father and brother have a habit of sweating heavily when their dreams start to spiral downward into the memories they can’t get away from once their eyes are closed, both of their broad chests heaving and wet in the center, the sour, acrid proof of their fear spreading like blood from the hollows of their throats to the spaces under their arms.

John used to say Mary’s name but Sam says Jess’, and for how much one sounds like the other to Dean they may as well be the same name and the same woman. _They’re as good as, aren’t they?_ Dean thinks to himself the few times Sam can’t hold it in any longer and talks about Jess and the life they had together like a gun is being held to the side of his head, his words choked and full and all running together into a formless fairy tale that doesn’t sound like anything Dean has ever experienced. Jess made Sam laugh all the time, she made a killer lasagna, she had perfect tits even without a bra encasing the round hills they made on her chest, she made every day better just by being part of it, she was everyone’s favorite person and Sam had no idea why she picked him and what she saw in him. Sam makes her sound like an angel when he talks about her just the way Dad did when he described Mary and Dean was still too little to know that such a woman could never have existed.

What makes Sam and John different is that Dean was never jealous of Mary the way he’s jealous of Jess. What hurts Dean, what squeezes his heart tight in his chest like his brother’s got a hand wrapped around it is that Dean knows Jess was exactly the way Sam says she was. He knows it the same way he knows when someone’s lying to him or the way he knows how to handle the smooth curves of a pistol, and he hates that Jess was so perfect and beautiful and funny, he hates that Sam loved her so much.

Dean doesn’t know if he’s more jealous that Sam spent so much time fucking Jess or that he spent so much time devoted to doing what Jess wanted him to do, so much time loving her, so much time _being_ _with her._ Everything in Dean’s chest feels gnarled and sharp and wrong, dark vines twisted together under his ribs and taking up too much of him, too much of his limited time and energy. He doesn’t know if he wants Sam because he wants his brother to commit to him the way he committed to Jess and his understanding of intimacy and relationships is tangled up too close to sex to separate the two or if he wants Sam because he thinks he’s always been one step away from too close and wants to fall off the bitter edge at last.

Sometimes, Dean thinks Sam knows that the things he says hurt but that he says them anyway because he needs to get them out, and every time Dean climbs into bed beside his brother he unfailingly asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Once, only once (after he’s spent almost half an hour listening to him talk about the trip he and Jess took to the beach last Spring Break), Dean asks Sam, “When we weren’t talking, did you miss me?”

 _Did you dream about me? Did you talk to Jess about me the way you talk about her now? Did you think about me at all?_ Dozens of unspoken words hang in the air between them.

Sam looks at Dean for a long time after he asks the question. They’re in the cramped twin bed together on the far end of the hotel room they’re sharing, both of then lying on their sides across from one another. Sam’s eyes look strangely blank as he stares at Dean, and Dean can’t tell if his brother is falling back asleep or deep in thought, but he waits anyway.

“I missed you like I’d miss an arm if I lost one,” Sam says at last.

It’s all he says, and Dean doesn’t ask for clarification.

Maybe he doesn’t have to let Sam have his body to keep him around, Dean thinks to himself as he moves toward Sam on the bed, taking his brother in his arms and holding him there, breathing in sync with him in the silence.

Maybe it’s enough to just give him everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> I love the idea of Sam and Dean's relationship being so unhealthy and bizarre, and I played around with that a little bit here. Please let me know what you thought if you happened to enjoy this :)


End file.
